Did Alexander II say: “Russia is not a commercial or agricultural state, but a military one, and its calling is to be a thunderstorm of light”?

In the media, blogs and historical literature, there is often a saying about the calling of Russia, which is attributed to Emperor Alexander II. We decided to check the correctness of this attribution.

Sometimes the quote is accompanied by an explanation that the phrase was printed in a geography textbook intended for cadet corps. But most often the quote appears without any context. She is mentioned in his book “The last king"writer Edward Radzinsky and cite in their media publications, for example, "Nezavisimaya newspaper", "Kommersant" And "Vedomosti", as well as bloggers on the platform "Zen"and in LiveJournal. The phrase can also be found in numerous online quotation books.

The earliest mention of a quote attributed to Alexander II was found in an essay by Nikolai Leskov “Russian democrat in Poland"(1880). Leskov writes: “It’s amazing to remember how people used to instill with particular seriousness that “Russia is not a trading or agricultural state, but a military one, and its calling is to be a thunderstorm of light.” There is no explanation in the text about whose quote this is.

Andrei Leskov, the writer’s son, in the biographical book “Life of Nikolai Leskov” clarifies: “It must be said that even in the cadet corps, the geography textbook personally edited by the tsar himself “with particular seriousness” explained to the students that “Russia is not a trading or agricultural state, but a military one, and its calling is to be a thunderstorm of light.” However, the compilers of the edition, published in 1984, note that in geography textbooks of 1830–1850 “the given formula is absent,” and suggest that the phrase attributed to Alexander II came from oral stories. And in fact, in "Textbook of geography of the Russian Empire”, according to which they taught in cadet corps during his reign, there is no such phrase. The quote is missing in earlier textbook by Konstantin Arsenyev, which was republished until the second half of the 19th century.

There is no phrase about Russia’s calling to be a thunderstorm of light in any memories at that time, nor at historical literature, dedicated to cadet corps. Therefore, it can be assumed that the quote attributed to Alexander II could have been uttered by one of the teachers of the corps or existed as an oral tradition. Then it appeared at Nikolai Leskov’s and was commented on by his son. Through the classics of Russian literature, the quote became widespread.

Cover photo: N. Lavrov. Portrait of Alexander II (via Wikipedia Commons)

Most likely not true

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. Did Alexander III say that Russia has only two allies - the army and the navy?
2. Did Napoleon say: “A people who do not want to feed their army will soon feed someone else’s”?
3. Did Peter I issue a decree that “trade in the subsoil of the earth is the primordial business of thieves”?